If They Stayed
by Sarahfofera
Summary: It had been made clear to Miles that their relationship had changed drastically on the long journey to Willoughby, and that Charlie gave zero shits about what any of her family thought about that. She also made it quite clear that she and Bass were together, a package deal that they could either take or leave.
1. Chapter 1

Bass could feel his focused gaze from across the fire. It was cold, cutting through the warm summer night. He could remember a time when a fire was something to relax next to, drink a few beers by. Now a fire was a necessity. It was used to cook,to boil water, to keep animals away. Not to enjoy your cold beer aside. He could remember doing that with Miles, drinking cold beers next to the fire pit in his parents back yard, but it was a fuzzy, distant sort of remembering. The kind of remembering that made you think it could have been a dream, if you didn't have the smell of the smoke to tell you it was real.

Bass was broken out of his reverie by Charlie's warm hand on his shoulder, leaning down to hand him his plate. As she turned to go he snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her into his lap and nuzzling her throat. "Thank you my sweet, docile little woman" he murmured in her ear, while she gave a throaty laugh and hit him in the shoulder.

"Sweet and docile hm? Don't you just wish. Ask that deer on your plate how sweet and docile I was when I shot him in the neck."

" You're right, thank you my fierce, sexy warrior woman" he answered, moving his hand down to squeeze her thigh.

Aaron have them a disgusted look from the log next to them. " Your foreplay is disturbing." Charlie just laughed, leaning down to give Bass a lingering kiss before getting up to get her own bowl of the venison stew.

As she sat back down next to him, Bass looked up to see Miles' gaze still focused on them. He could still read Miles like a book, after all these years. He could see the simmering fury in his eyes, along with the jealousy and bitterness. It had been there almost since the moment Charlie had brought him to Willoughby. Definitely since it had been made clear to him that their relationship had changed drastically on the long journey, and that Charlie gave zero shits about what any of her family thought about that. She made it quite clear that she and Bass were together, a package deal that they could either take or leave.

They took it of course, after much screaming and yelling, Rachel pulling out a shotgun, Charlie rather succinctly disarming Rachel of said shotgun, and a fistfight between Bass and Miles. After all was said and done, an uneasy truce was formed where they all pretended there wasn't a maelstrom of hidden emotions going on under the surface of their everyday lives. Miles pretended that he was angry Bass was fucking his niece, not that he wished he was the one fucking her instead.

Rachel pretended that she didn't know that she was, at best, second choice. A stand in for her own daughter. She pretended that the man she lay in bed next to every night didn't wish it was his niece next him instead. Bass could see that she knew, could see it in the cold, calculating way she would look at Charlie when she thought nobody was watching. He could see that it wasn't disgust or worry the sick, twisted bitch was feeling, but bitter jealousy. It was the same way that Miles looked at him now.

Through every fucked up thing they had done through, with, for and against one another, Bass thought that this would be the one that would finally break them. Bass could not justify or allow that look of lust and want and possession that his brother wore when he looked at the woman Bass loved. Nor could he put aside the new look that Miles wore when scrutinizing him. Because on top of that hate and jealousy and fury, there was now calculation. As if he were imagining just how Charlie would lean on and cling to good 'ol uncle Miles after the tragedy that would unfortunately befall his good buddy Bass. Uncle Miles, who would be all she had left in this world. Imagining how he could twist that grief and dependence into finally becoming what and who he wanted to be to her. Bass knew how his mind worked, especially those dark and twisted corners that were so similar to his own, those unmapable places where Bass had lived for so very long. Where he had been trapped, until Charlie came in like a super nova, throwing light on them, airing them out and making them places he could live again without the darkness threatening and grabbing at him every moment. A not so small part of him could even understand Miles' viewpoint, because that's what Charlie did. She took broken and used things and made them useful again through her own Hurculean force of will and self. When Charlie was with you, believing in you, you felt like everything would be okay, that you would be okay. Charlie was sunlight and warmth after a lifetime of gray, rainy days. It was only natural to want to be as close as possible to that sunshine. Unfortunately for Miles, that spot was taken, and Bass would fight tooth and nail and sword and fist before he allowed anyone else to take it, even the person he loved second most in the entire world. A naive part of him hoped it wouldn't come to that, but that small piece of General Monroe still left in him knew that it would if they stayed. 


	2. Chapter 2

Miles had never been in love before. He HAD loved people, his parents, Bass, his brother. But he had never felt that mythical feeling talked about so much in songs and poetry, that feeling that wars were fought over and tragedy filled plays were written about. He had been very fond of Emma, in lust with Rachel, slept his way through life with women of all types and backgrounds. But that emotion, love, had never been part of the equation. So he might be wrong, maybe this all consuming _need_ for Charlie, this obsessive, dark, have to have it fuck the consequences need, wasn't love. But it was _something_ he had never felt before, something he knew he would kill to satisfy. And maybe that's what love was. An emotion that trumped everything else like shame and morality. He knew he shouldn't want his niece, he knew that. The thing was, he just didn't fucking care. He wasn't known as the Butcher of Baltimore, the General of the Monroe Militia, for his morals. He earned those names because he was a man who knew what he wanted and took it. No questions asked, no long, sleepless nights wondering about heaven and hell. In that sense, this post blackout world was made fire men like him. Men like him and Bass.

If he were being honest, that might be what rankled the most. Not that she hadn't chosen _him,_ but that she had chosen the man most like him in the entire world.

He had tried to act on it before, this need. Of course he had, he was not known for denying himself anything, pleasure and vice most of all. The first time had been when he'd seen her there, kneeling over the man she had been sent to kill in that skimpy dress from Drexel. It hasn't been the dress though, plastered to her prefect body, that got to him. No, it had been that smile on her face. That look of complete trust and gratitude and _joy_ to see him. From the moment she had shot back into his life like a bullet, it had amazed him that whatever she felt, she expressed it completely. It didn't matter if she was fighting or loving or just living, she did it with every part of herself, _gave_ every part of herself. When she stood up and wrapped her arms around him, burrowing her face in his chest and whispering that she knew he would come for her, he couldn't hold back anymore. He pulled her face to his and looked in her eyes, hoping, _daring_ her to take this plundge with him, _for_ him. With his mouth a millimeter away from hers, feeling her breath wash over his lips, he felt serene. Like something that was always going to happen, _supposed_ to happen, was finally clicking into place for him. Then she pulled back and laughed, a nervous sound more that one of mirth, and headed to the window, telling him they needed to find the others without looking at him.

That had been the closest he had come. There were other moments, where he hugged her for a few seconds longer that necessary, touched her face in a way an uncle wouldn't. He had been content with these moments, willing to live off of them until he could have what he wanted, be who he needed to be to her. Then she came back with Bass.

He looked at them now, over the fire, deciding how to remove this threat to his happiness. Trying not to show the rage he was feeling as his best friend soaked in the joy and satisfaction that should have been his, _would be his_. The content look on Bass's face made him clench his fists.

He felt a hand pulling at his and looked up into Rachel's cool eyes.

"Ready to turn in?"

He looked back at Charlie and Bass, quietly whispering to one another, them back at Rachel.

"Not quite yet, you go on ahead and I'll follow you in soon."

He saw the brief look of anger flare in her eyes before she smoothed her expression back into it's customary blankness.

"Okay, don't be too long."

He gave a noncommittal sound as she stood up and went to their tent, saying nothing to the others.

He didn't know why she wanted to play this game, pretending that everything between them was the way it used to be, the way she had always wanted it to be. She had married Ben after he had told her to, letting her know he had no intentions of settling down and that his brother was a good man, the only choice for her that would be and do all the things she needed that he wouldn't, couldn't. She had railed and screamed, telling him she loved him and he loved her, and that he couldn't just walk away from her, from her feelings for him, their _love_. He could and did, and the wedding went off without a hitch. When she showed up in Philadelphia all those years later, he knew why she had come.

Miles had never been very good at pretending. He felt what he felt, when he felt it. He wasn't like Rachel, able to wrap it all up in a box and shove it down, down deep until it clawed it's way back up in a storm of destruction. He knew she knew the score. She had now put Charlie firmly next to Bass in that special catagory of "People Who Took Miles from Rachel." He was constantly weary of the storm that he knew was going to come from her when that box of crazy fought its way back up.

His focus came crashing back to the present when he heard Charlie's laugh. Bass was standing over her, pulling on her hands to help her up.

"Well, we're off to bed" Charlie said, throwing another log on the fire. She looked at Aaron "wake me when it my turn for watch."

"Will do" was his only reply. He still didn't understand or approve of Charlie's 'Monroe Thing', as he called it, and made certain everyone knew it.

"Night, Miles" she called as she tugged on Bass's hand. He looked up as they walked past, making eye contact with his 'friend'.

"Don't stay up late stuck in your head Miles, it's not good for you." Bass directed at him.

He just started back at him, an entire conversation happening in the span of a few heartbeats. Charlie tugged on the hand still holding hers and their eye contact broke, ending the tense moment. "Night" he grunted, more for Charlie's benefit than anything else.


End file.
